by Leigh Tudor
Gus lifted one eyebrow. “Dances better than her.”
Chapter Fourteen
“Choose rather to be strong of soul than strong of body.”
—Pythagoras
Greek philosopher who influenced the philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, and, through them, Western philosophy
* * *
There were few things in life Mercy felt truly in control of, least of all her desire to paint. That she had managed to refrain from her heart’s desire this long had been a Herculean effort. But she could feel herself beginning to cave, could tell she was slowly, and agonizingly, losing her resolve.
She stared out her window from the cocoon of her bed and marveled at the sheer magnitude of the kaleidoscope of stars that swirled in the night sky.
Most artists would choose a Windsor Blue to represent the hues in their skies. She grimaced. There was far too much color in Windsor Blue. In her mind, the sky was darker and more ominous than bright and hopeful. No, she would dip her brush into indigo, affording the sky the deliberate honor of spanning light-years and lifetimes.
Mercy squeezed her eyes shut, and with a heavy heart, she sat up in her bed and pulled on her robe. She couldn’t hold back any longer. She wasn’t kidding herself; she knew the time would come, but she had prayed every Sunday in Cara’s church that she might find a way to delay her bliss and avoid the pain.
She grabbed her phone, slipped down the staircase, and flipped on the single ceiling light illuminating the sunroom. Not the best source of light in which to paint, but ideal situations were never where she found her inner muse. Chaos, indecision, loss of control, fear, those were the emotions that made her pine for a brush, compelled her to do the very thing that would pull her under, take her over, and turn her askew.
She pulled her phone from her robe to check for an answer to her plea. Nothing yet, but she knew it was only a matter of time.
She set up the largest canvas in the room and began to squeeze indigo onto the palette, knowing that within a few hours she would forego the palette, and even her brushes, using only her hands to fully express her innermost emotions.
The sheer euphoria took her breath away as she made her first paint stroke. Tingling goose bumps raised the dark hairs on her arms as if her body were singing hallelujah. She wondered if the feeling was similar to that of an orgasm. Or falling in love. She painted another sweeping stroke and lost herself.
There was just so much to say and feel.
Loren sat up in bed, hearing a noise downstairs, and checked the time on her phone.
Four AM.
And then she heard it again.
She quietly pulled the covers back and made her way to the narrow staircase. She peered down and could see a light coming from the back side of the house. It was probably Cara or Mercy, grabbing a snack since they skipped dinner last night with all the drama that was going on. Just in case, she reached behind her, grabbing the baseball bat that leaned against the wall, a safety precaution that sat benignly until ready for use.
She made her way down the stairs, back against the far wall with her hands in swing position. She peeked inside the sunroom and instantly noticed several canvases leaning against the walls and wondered when Mercy could have painted them.
And then she saw her sister draped over the table, splattered with paint, sitting in a chair with her head resting in the crook of her elbow. She was either taking a break or asleep.
“Psst, Mercy.”
She didn’t move. Unusual for a light sleeper known to go for the windpipe with a mere nudge to the shoulder.
Another creak, this time from the kitchen. An adrenaline rush drenched Loren’s system, her entire body in high alert and ready to swing. Someone was trying to open the side door that opened from the outside into the kitchen.
Thankfully, the lights were out, making it easier to catch the perp unawares. She moved into the pantry to the right of the door and waited for the vandal to make his or her way inside.
She considered rushing toward the bottom kitchen cabinet where three “go bags” were hidden in a hole in the sheetrock. Hers with a loaded 9-millimeter. After a few calculations, she decided she didn’t have time and would have to make do with the bat.
The door swung open, and she reacted with a swift swing but instead of connecting with the intruder who had ducked at the last minute, the bat crashed into the door’s window.
From the corner of her eye, she caught him scooting under the kitchen table. She turned to stalk him and flipped the table over with one hand. Choking up on the bat, she reared back and suddenly found herself on her back, the bat pulled out of her grasp, the weight of her aggressor pressing her against the floor.
She pulled back a leg, kicking him in the chest with her knee and sending him crashing into a cupboard. She scooted back, opening the drawer just above her, riffled around the contents and pulled out a long kitchen knife. She jumped to her knees in a single motion with the blade at her ear, ready to strike.
“Stop! Loren, stop it.”
She hesitated just as Mercy turned on the kitchen light. Loren stayed in combat stance as she took in the figure against the wall, wearing head-to-foot black gear.
Recognition struck and she lowered the knife panting. “Dr. Petrov?”
The man rubbed his bloody lip with the back of his thumb. “Greetings, little Loren,” he said with a grin and thick Russian accent. “Quite nice welcome party, no?”
She fought to catch her breath, trying to make sense of who was sitting on her kitchen floor. Her hand shot out to help him up and he hesitated as he considered the risk and then finally obliged.
“What in the hell are you doing here?” Loren asked, lowering the knife to her side.
He once again touched his hand to his bloody lip and then looked at Mercy.
Loren switched her focus to her sister, who looked like shit warmed over. Her face was unusually pale, with dark circles under her eyes.
“I called Vlad.”
Not Dr. Petrov. Vlad.
Mercy leaned her head against the doorway, clutching her stomach with her arms. “Some time ago.”
The knife dropped to the floor, and Loren’s eyes went wide. “You called Dr. Petrov? Uh, Vlad? Oh my God, do you know what you’ve done?”
The Russian doctor went straight to Mercy. As his thumb lifted her eyelid, he said, “She had no choice, padruga.”
My friend.
“What do you mean, no choice?”
“She suffers, no?” He held Mercy’s face in his hands. “How long, milaya?”
Loren’s head jerked back. She knew several languages, Russian being one of them, and she just heard one of the Center’s medical doctors refer to her sister as “sweetheart.”
“I have time,” Mercy said, avoiding eye contact. “Just a few more paintings.”
“Must you?” he asked.
She nodded. “Just a bit longer.”
Loren watched with her mouth open as Mercy turned toward the sunroom and Vlad followed. Blinking and finding her bearings, she followed them.
“What’s going on, Mercy? Do you not get that you’ve compromised our cover? A cover that took me months to create?”
Mercy began to pick through her paints with an almost zombie-like expression.
Vlad said, not taking his eyes off Mercy, “You need not concern yourself. Mara tell me what to do. I need new identity, new travel papers. You speak now with Vlad Kushnir, ethnic Russian whose family travel from Ukraine in nineteen fifty-four to southern peninsula of Crimea. I both Ukrainian and Russian. I study in Kyiv at The National Agricultural University of Ukraine. I have expertise in animal husbandry. You find my picture with graduating class twenty-eighteen. New birth documents also available.”
Loren’s eyebrows lifted. “You’re telling me your cover is an Eastern European, with the same name of Vlad, who artificially inseminates livestock for a living?”
“Tak.”
Yes. “And you didn’t think to cha
nge your name from Vlad to say, Oleksander?”
“I both Ukrainian and Russian. Vlad popular name both countries.”
She pushed her palms into her eyes and then removed them to glare at Mercy. “And you gave me shit about using the name Ingalls.”
Mercy half-shrugged, dabbing a blood burgundy onto her palette. “Lack of judgment from both of you, I’d say.”
Loren took a deep breath, torn between shaking her sister and waking Cara to grab their go bags and bolt while they still had time. She crossed her arms and began to pace the room and stopped in front of Vlad, who was completely absorbed in her sister’s painting. “I’m still not clear as to why you’re here. Care to explain?”
Once again, Vlad deferred to Mercy. She nodded to him, as if giving him unspoken permission, as she pulled another large canvas upright.
Vlad sat on a nearby chair, watching her intently. “Your sister. Her lesions not take well. She suffer greatly, after.”
“After?”
“After painting, she suffer migraines. So painful. Beyond comprehension.” He hesitated before adding, “She known to lose sight.”
Loren, again astonished, said, “How did I not know this?” She then turned to Mercy, who was engrossed in her painting. “Mercy, why didn’t you ever tell me this?”
Vlad answered for her. “She say no.” He added, “Tell you she paints when she sleeps past pain.”
“Painting causes her pain?” Loren asked in disbelief. Thinking she was misinterpreting his accent.
He nodded. “When she complete art, I give injection. Less pain. She does not lose sight.”
Mercy spoke, robotically. “I didn’t want you to know.”
Loren’s head turned to her. “Why wouldn’t you want me to know? I’m your sister. That’s what I’m here for.”
Mercy put down the brush, opting to work with her hands. “There was nothing you could do. I had to paint, either for the doctor or for myself. Either way, I had no choice.” She stopped with her paint-covered hands at her sides, head tilted, staring at the painting. “You’re a fixer, Loren. And for once, I didn’t want to burden you with something you couldn’t fix.”
The painting had transformed into a man’s face, his one eye overly large.
“I see you, milaya,” Vlad said with blatant adoration. “Always.”
Mercy continued to paint, her tearful expression making Loren’s throat feel as if a 250-pound man were sitting on her windpipe.
“I know you do,” Mercy said.
After a restless night of running through a laundry list of memories, trying to discern where she lacked judgment, why she believed anything Halstead told her and regretting not offing the bastard sooner, Loren finally fell asleep, waking up late the next morning to another gray winter’s day. She lay on her side, looking out her window, and began rummaging around the items on her side table. Recognizing the feel of her iPhone, she tilted it up to check the weather app.
Cloudy, eighty percent chance of rain, and fifty-five degrees.
She wondered if the people of Wilder were waking up and having to drag themselves out of bed.
They didn’t even know how good they had it.
Try living in a sterile, cold research Center without windows or easy access to the outdoors. A place so dreary and devoid of warmth that going on assignment was nothing short of a treat, no matter the amount of danger they faced. They were given access to limited funds in case of unforeseen events and would spend it all on outrageous outfits just to piss off Jasper and the doctor. Once at the hotel or predetermined safe house, they’d gorge themselves on the local food and Netflix.
Which might explain their current altered sense of normal.
Loren covered her eyes with her elbow and sighed heavily.
Rainstorms, hurricanes, hell, they could’ve cared less if there was a tsunami as long as they had those few moments of freedom from the bleak confines of the Center and the doctor and his underlings.
Vlad.
She stretched, thinking she wouldn’t necessarily file Vlad as one of the doctor’s sycophants, but he was certainly part of the medical staff, arriving at the Center well after Mercy’s lesions were established and her artistic capabilities were beginning to evolve.
Once again, she sifted through her memories, piecing timelines together. Mercy had to have been at least sixteen when Vlad showed up on the scene. Last night, he appeared to be in his late twenties or early thirties, which would’ve made him in his early to mid-twenties while working at the Center. That seemed young, though.
She dug her palms in her eyes. Was she completely clueless as to what was going on with her sisters while living at the Center?
She had yet to broach the subject of Jasper to Cara, choosing to wait until Cara came to her senses and re-inhabited her body. There was no way in hell she was going to address that subject with the churlish imposter that was fighting for imminent domain with her sister’s soul.
But, if she had missed something sketchy going on between Cara and Jasper, maybe she’d also missed something between Mercy and the young Russian doctor?
But how could she have known? A steady churn of people going in and out of their lives at the Center in the name of scientific research was the norm. Not only doctors but educators, as well.
And like herself, Mercy was inundated with educators.
Mercy had spent years after her surgery working with tutors and highly regarded artists, all at the doctor’s orders. All of them are highly compensated, and with one common objective: to hone her artistic skills and turn her into a master.
And they were certainly successful. Regardless of the style, be it Modernism, Cubism, Expressionism, Neoclassicism, or Renaissance, Mercy could paint near-perfect replicas.
But what was really amazing to watch was when she was in the throes of creating her own art. Art that wasn’t coerced for financial gain but that which sprang organically from her soul. Loren would watch mesmerized as Mercy became almost rabid with energy and drenched in emotion. Oftentimes, the pure, intense power of the moment reminded Loren of when Cara played her music. As if the art was pouring out of their bodies in the name of self-preservation.
Loren considered her own inexplicable predilection for all things math-related. She couldn’t ever remember having an obsession for her acquired math skills, as her sisters had for art and music, only an inexplicable calm that came with seeing things in a way that made perfect sense. A way that seemed to answer questions that she never even pondered prior to the accident.
Such as the beauty and elegance of pi and how everything, whether man-made or derived from nature, was somehow related to pi.
Which made everything, in her mind, beautiful and elegant.
She remembered the walls in her antiseptic room at the Center covered with calculations, algorithms, and geometric drawings. But she created them not from some innate compulsion but from a dire need for harmony. A specific form of serenity that came in an algorithmic or geometric structure.
Maybe even hope.
Chapter Fifteen
“Mathematics knows no races or geographic boundaries; for mathematics, the cultural world is one country.”
—David Hilbert
German mathematician, and one of the most influential and universal mathematicians of the 19th and early 20th centuries
* * *
She sat up in bed and leaned her head on her knees as she looked outside her window. She just couldn’t recall Mercy being sick for any period. Tired, but never sick.
After paint-bingeing, Mercy was always exhausted, having been up for days. But she couldn’t remember her ever becoming ill or losing her vision. She did recall Dr. Petrov, or Vlad, spending an inordinate amount of time with her, but hell, she assumed he was just another doctor making his daily rounds and doing his fair share of observations. The three of them were like lab rats, constantly being poked, prodded, and experimented on.
She pulled herself out of bed and made her way to t
he sunroom, wearing her sleep shorts and a T. Peeking around the corner, she eyed Mercy sleeping on the futon and quietly walked inside the room.
Loren’s heart warmed. Mercy looked so much better this morning. So peaceful. Vlad must’ve given her some strong meds after she finished painting last night.
After checking on Mercy, she slowly began to turn in a circle in the middle of the room, and her heart rate picked up speed and her hand came to her chest as she viewed the onslaught of emotions expressed on dozens of canvases, as well as the walls themselves.
Clasping her hands under her chin, she allowed her eyes to light on each individual piece, so struck by their raw beauty. This was when she felt closest to Mercy. When given the rare opportunity to see her sister’s true inner-self expressed in explicit brushstrokes and bold swirls of color, depicting compassion, anger, benevolence, and vulnerability.
What would the people of Wilder think of her sister’s work if they were to step inside this sunroom? Would they be speechless or fail to appreciate the genius behind the brush?
It would be difficult to blame them if they were unable to appreciate her art. Mercy spent an enormous amount of energy acting as if she were someone else entirely, certainly not the sensitive individual expressed in her paintings.
Yet another coping mechanism meticulously crafted and executed due to their upbringing.
Guilt swirled and, despite her efforts, found its way to her chest. She was supposed to protect her sisters. It was her job to know when they were suffering.
She heard a noise in the kitchen and wondered if Cara was up, but instead found Vlad with a jelly glass and a bottle of vodka. The table had been righted, but for the most part, the room was still askew from their late-night skirmish.
She refrained from smiling as she rounded the table. “You know you’re a cliché right now? A Russian drinking vodka at nine a.m. in the morning.”